It is a need and an established policy in most urban and suburban areas to separate regular household garbage from recyclable materials such as cans and bottles to protect the environment and reduce the long-term damage caused to environment by non-degradables in garbage disposal areas. In the past, a number of disposal systems have been devised to separate garbage from recyclables. But these systems usually encompass separate containers and/or separate drop-in holes or arrangements for different types of items. These systems consist of separate containers with different openings for different items. A patentabilty search conducted (a copy of the report is attached) found the following U.S. patents (copies provided in the appendix) that are pertinent to the invention described in this application:
U.S. Pat. No. 1,977,922, Inventor: Serre;
This patent to Serre discloses a tiltable container for ashes or ink. PA1 This patent to Olsen discloses a powder box with separate compartments with a rotating cover. PA1 This patent to Stutler discloses a trash container with separate compartments for different items. Each compartment has a separate entrance. PA1 This patent to Bitsch discloses a container with a mechanism for separating solid and liquid waste.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,636,646, Inventor: Olsen;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,980, Inventor: Stutler;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,205,433: Inventor: Bitsch;
None of these designs is compact enough for use in today's households. Consequently, their use in households remained very limited. In today's household environment, not having a convenient system to separate recyclables from garbage is necessitating having storage containers at two different locations; usually a garbage can in the kitchen, and a can for recyclables in garage or outside of the house. Besides its inconvenience, this situation contributes to amount of recyclables not reclaimed but disposed with garbage.
In summary, the existing designs have not provided a convenient, effective, compact, and space efficient solution to this problem. The Y-shaped garbage and recyclables separating disposal system (referred to as "YSGR" in the remainder of this document) described here addresses this problem and provides a convenient, and space effective solution to it.